Page 7 of The Evernight Court

No, he wanted to rip me apart piece by piece now more than ever.

“Romin,” Emil said with a growl, and if I wasn’t holding onto the doors’ handles, I’d have hit the floor by now.

“If Grey gave her this tower, she is within her rights to claim it for herself and forbid us from entering.”

It was like he’d put the whole world in the palm of my hand.

Romin slowly started coming toward me, and the tips of his fangs were barely there as he approached.

“If Grey gave her this tower, then we are indeed not to enter through those doors.”

Stop!I shouted in my mind, and I willed him to stop moving with every fiber in my being.

But Romin took another step, and another, and another—until he was barely two feet away. I felt the energy coming off him, like heat—the bad kind of heat that had been about to scorch me the night of the Blood Call. It was magic,hismagic, and it was coming at me, trying to slowly get me to submit.

For a moment there, I thought he’d succeed. For a moment there, I thought this wasn’t going to work. There was nowhere to go in this castle that they couldn’t find me, and I was as good as dead already.

But then…I felt it. I felt the other kind of magic, the one that sort ofpushedagainst Romin like a steady, cool energy. It was solid, like a damn wall, and slowly, the heat coming from Romin began to lose strength, then disappeared completely.

The look on his face was priceless, and I’d have laughed if I wasn’t so terrified.

“She’s telling the truth,” said Romin reluctantly, taking a step back, while the two other brothers looked at him like they couldn’t believe what he just said.

“Are you serious?!” Tristian asked, but I didn’t look away from Romin again.

With shaking hands, I brought the doors closer and closer until he could only see half of my face.

Over. It was done.

“Stay out,” I spit, then slammed the doors shut with all my strength.

It had worked.

My God, the magic had actually worked.

At first, I had no more energy left to walk, so I sat there by the doors for a while, looking at them, at the handles, as if to make sure they wouldn’t turn. As if to make sure that Romin hadn’t just been bluffing to play with me. I genuinely expected him to come through the doors with a smile on his face, saying,Gotcha!before he grabbed me and dragged me all the way to his own fucking bedroom.

He didn’t, though. This tower was really mine now. Grey had genuinely given it to me. He’d meant those words he said that night; otherwise, the magic wouldn’t have turned Romin away the way it did. He had given me his tower and with such ease, like he knew it was going to save me from his brothers one day.

And now he was gone.

I had no idea how I made it upstairs to the third floor, but I found his bedroom—ourbedroom—and I lay on the bed again. I was cold and hot at the same time, and for the life of me I couldn’t understand why it felt like I’d died. Like I wasgone, too. Like what remained in this room, lying on his bed was just a shell of who I had been at dawn.

Eventually, my eyes closed, and sleep took me.

When I woke up, it was already seven p.m. My stomach growled, my body weak with hunger, but the thought of putting food in my mouth made me want to gag.

No, I would not be eating today. At least not yet.

So many things went through my mind as I went to the bathroom—ourbathroom. That very place where we’d showered together just a day ago. Where we’d been together against those tiles in the shower cabin.

So little time to even come to terms with the fact that I was Grey’s now. So little time to understand the Blood Call and what it meant that I’d chosen him and what my life was truly going to look like in the Whispering Woods until I died.

It hadn’t seemed all that bad then.

In fact, I couldn’t bring myself to care about much other than Grey in those two days.Two fucking days,that’s all I’d gotten.

So little time.

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